Four E.E. Cummings Songs

Song Cycle by Carol Barnett (b. 1949)

Score: Carol Barnett (external link)
Publisher: Carol Barnett (external link)

1. Spring is like a perhaps hand  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
Spring is like a perhaps hand
 [ ... ]

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2. the Cambridge ladies  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also,with the church's protestant blessings
daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow,both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things--
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps.  While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
....the Cambridge ladies do not care,above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless,the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

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Confirmed with E. E. Cummings, Tulips and Chimneys, New York: Liveright, 1976, page 109.

First published in Broom, May 1922

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Poom Andrew Pipatjarasgit [Guest Editor]

3. Thy fingers make early flowers  [sung text not yet checked]

Language: English 
thy fingers make early flowers 
of all things.
thy hair mostly the hours love:
a smothness which
sings, saying 
(though love be a day)
do not fear, we will go amaying.

thy whitest feet crisply are straying.
always
thy moist eyes at kisses are playing,
whose strangeness much
says; singing
(though love be a day)
for which girl art thou flowers bringing?

to be thy lips is a sweet thing
and small.
Death, thee i call rich beyond wishing
if this thou catch,
else missing.
(though love be a day
and life be nothing, it shall not stop kissing).

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Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Garrett Medlock [Guest Editor]

4. a pretty a day
 (Sung text)

Language: English 
a pretty a day
 [ ... ]

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Total word count: 347